Okay, so I’m driving to work one morning, and traffic is moving at maybe 20 to 40 miles per hour, accordion fashion. There was this lady behind me in a Lincoln LE that I was half watching in the rear view mirror. She kept swerving back and forth from the left lane (behind me) to the right lane without signaling, presumably choosing whichever lane appeared to be moving fractionally faster at any given moment. I tend to leave a reasonable amount of space between myself and the car in front of me (at those speeds, 2 maybe 3 car lengths) to allow for stopping distance, especially given the number of rear-end collisions along the I-565 corridor. She made it up beside me in the right lane and began eyeing the space in front of me, tail-gating the car in front of her to get far enough ahead to pull over in front of me. She began riding the center-line before she had room to come over, at which point the traffic in front of me began speeding up again. She swerved left, nearly clipping my bumper (again without signaling) and began to tail-gate the car in front of me. As she passed the car two spaces ahead of where she had been beside me, she went positively apoplectic, waving her arms, screaming and pointing at the (admittedly rather large) space between their car and the one about 20 car lengths ahead of it. I was rather taken aback not just by her obvious rage at being inconvenienced by a slow driver (in the slow lane), but also by her complete lack of any kind of clue about her own lack of driving ability. This brings me to my point, I drive roughly an hour and a half of round-trip Interstate everyday to get to work and back. During my drive time, traffic moves anywhere from 80-85 miles per hour down to 5 to 10 miles per hour, with a few complete dead-stop traffic jams along the way. This gives me time to reflect on how people drive and ways it could be improved, such as better licensing standards and even the cars we drive. To begin with, in Alabama, you take a written and practical test when you first get your license. The practical portion of my driver’s test consisted of going around the city block where the county courthouse is located, stopping at stop signs, signaling turns and parking as if we were on a hill. The entire test took 10 minutes, start to finish. Once you get your license, it must be renewed (small fee) every 4 years but you are never required to be tested (written or practical) again. I think the first step to improving the traffic problems may be something as simple as requiring re-testing upon license renewal, to ensure that you have not completely forgotten how to drive a car properly. I am not suggesting that it be a practical test every 4 years, every other renewal would be fine for that. I do however think that a written test (randomly generated questions) should be taken with every renewal. For changes to the cars, I rather liked Bruce Willis’ cab in the movie Fifth Element. To start the car, you insert your license into a reader which checks the status and lets you start the car if your license is valid. The reader in the car can automatically deduct points from your license for traffic law infractions. You tailgate the car in front of you, 1 point deducted. You change lanes without signaling, another point. You get the idea. At the point when you lose all the points on your license, your car no longer starts and I believe you should then be required to take (and pass) some form of driving instruction class before being allowed to apply for a new license. Or maybe I’m just annoyed at all the other drivers I have to spend too many hours a week on the road with.
